Adrian Edmondson on struggling to help wife Jennifer Saunders through cancer | Daily Mail Online comments While his wife Jennifer Saunders has been enduring a 'brutal' course of treatment for breast cancer over the past year, Adrian Edmondson has been desperately trying to support her and their three daughters. And the hardest part, he reveals here, is how helpless he feels. Ade Edmondson wants to get something off his chest. No one, he says, 'battles' cancer. Neither is it 'a rollercoaster ride'. 'It's just a long, slow, miserable grind,' and he wants me to quote him on that verbatim. Oh, and while he's at it, no, his wife Jennifer Saunders, who is suffering with breast cancer, has not been given the all-clear. 'No one gets the all-clear,' he says. 'The treatment lasts five years and we're only a year into it. The big chemotherapy's finished and the radiotherapy's finished. There's this low-level treatment that carries on for five years, but you know from the beginning of the treatment when it's going to stop. Adrian Edmonson with wife Jennifer Saunders who has breast cancer 'So, there is no battle.

I hate the word battle. You just get battered with a load of drugs. People want the words "trauma", "battle" and " life-changing", but it's not a great three-part TV drama full of moments, it's a long grind, like a slow car crash that will last five years and then, hopefully, we'll get out.' Jennifer, the brilliant creator of Absolutely Fabulous, was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago, but neither she nor Ade have spoken about it publicly. Indeed, Jennifer, 52, says she never will. Ade doesn't really want to either. But he's sick to the back teeth of the nonsense that has been written, particularly reports that his wife has 'won her battle' and is 'cured'. He wishes like hell she was. 'Something like 140 women a day learn that they've got breast cancer,' he says. 'If they knew more about the disease, rather than having to read all this nonsense about battles, then they'd be able to accept what they're in for and be better prepared to face it. 'I personally know five people who have had breast cancer and it's just miserable. It happens slowly.

You don't suddenly ring someone up and say: "I've got cancer. I'm going to die." You ring up and say: "They've found a shadow. I've got to go and have another test." 'It's hard to bolster someone and say: "You're looking great today," when their hair's falling out. It's hard to convince them they do look great, even though they do to you' 'You don't find out the worst until...' he pauses. 'They find a shadow in a picture. Then people look at it a bit more. They test it and say: "We think it's this. We'd better do another test." 'They grab a bit and think it might be bad so you might have to have a bit of radiotherapy. It's all very incremental.' Ade was on tour with his folk band, The Bad Shepherds, when Jennifer phoned to tell him that doctors had found a shadow on her breast during a routine mammogram last October. Tests eventually revealed the shadow to be several malignant lumps, so Jennifer was started upon a 'brutal' course of chemotherapy. She lost her hair and, at times, her sense of humour; she felt wretched, sick.

Ade, 53, and their three daughters Ella, 24, Beattie, 23, and Freya, 20, tried to be supportive. But it wasn't always an easy undertaking. 'It was horrible for her and for us, because it's very hard to support someone and make them feel better through that misery,' says Ade. 'It's hard to keep them cheerful. 'She tried to stay positive, but it's hard to bolster someone and say: "You're looking great today," when their hair's falling out. It's hard to convince them they do look great, even though they do to you. 'But neither of us ever really thought death was a likely prospect. They were quite small lumps and were of a certain grade - and the prognosis was very, very good from the start. It's just that the amount of treatment grew as they found slightly different grades of this or that. So, no, we weren't blubbing, thinking: "Oh no, she's going to die." 'I've had other friends die. I know what dying is. This was just a really inconvenient, horrible kind of treatment.

It was a miserable business and extremely undignified.' I first met Adrian almost a decade ago and I know that he absolutely adores Jennifer, his wife of 25 years. Brutal treatment: Adrian Edmondson with his wife Jennifer Saunders, who is suffering from breast cancer Indeed, the last time we spoke, he said: 'The nightmare scenario is, what would happen if Jennifer divorced me?' I'm sure he never imagined this. 'You do have time in between all the tests and treatment to imagine the worst, the best and the in-between,' he says. 'Of course, you think of everything.' Jennifer's cancer finally became public in July when she attended her close friend Tracey Emin's 47th birthday party in the south of France without a wig. 'She just decided it was so f****** boring putting a wig and hat on the whole time,' says Ade. 'And it was really, really hot. She had also got used to what she looked like. By that time she had some hair back and wasn't as bald as she had been. She looked lovely, didn't she? 'It was a nice soft way for it to come out - and we were so used to it by then.

It's a bit like trying to get a series on the telly. By the time it gets there everyone is surprised, but you think you've been working on this for years.' Ade doesn't intend to be glib, but he's said all he's going to about his wife's cancer. We're actually here to talk about the ITV series Monte Carlo Or Bust, in which he heads off across the channel with Jack Dee in a VW camper van competing with Jodie Kidd, Julian Clary, Penny Smith and Rory McGrath to discover what makes the French tick. Close family: Ade with Jennifer and their newly-married daughter Ella Ade's not supposed to tell me who won, but let's just say he's looking rather pleased with himself. He's also looking astonishingly fit. It turns out that this several-bottles-of-wine-a-night comedian is on the wagon. And no, he tells me, it's not because Jennifer's 'battle with cancer' has been 'life-changing'. 'My daughter [Ella] got married last weekend. I didn't want to look like a porker walking down the aisle,' he says. 'I stopped drinking about two months ago - not entirely, but I stopped it being my main hobby.

'You reach an age where you have to make a decision: am I going to be a slightly chubby-faced person who feels ill in the morning, or am I going to wake up thinking: "Hey!" 'I don't think I was an alky, but I was just drinking too much and having fun doing it. It's when you have children that you start drinking. You have that large gin and tonic when you put them in the bath - which is large enough for your weekly allowance. Then, when you've got them to bed, you uncork a bottle of wine. Match Of The Day comes on and you crack open another. That would make you an alcoholic in the eyes of the medical profession, but it's just regular living for most people. And then, well, you know I've got a band?' I didn't until he tells me this. The last time we met two years ago he'd found a new writing partner, Nigel Smith, after ending his long partnership with Rik Mayall - with whom he appeared in The Young Ones and early 1990s sitcom Bottom - and was firing on all cylinders having written the ITV1 comedy series Teenage Kicks. It wasn't re-commissioned.

'The band started as a hobby,' he says. 'Now it's a big hobby. We do about 100 gigs a year. It feels like it did when Rik and I started because you're doing what you enjoy doing, you're able to keep doing it and eventually it becomes your job. Touring is a nice way to earn a living. 'Our family's always been very close. We didn't need cancer to know we all love each other. The girls have always been there, but they did come round a lot more and were a great help' People pay to come through the door to see you and you get a cut off that. There's no advertising revenue, no BBC licence fee, no Arts Council. It's just a clean deal.' Which seems to suit him. He tells me he doesn't want to sound like an 'old git' but he's had it with telly. Jennifer, who is currently writing the script for Mamma Mia! producer Judy Craymer's Spice Girls musical, seems to have, too. 'She's having a ball,' he says. 'Who would write for telly when it's so bloody difficult.

She was hot property when she was doing Ab Fab - although that wouldn't get made these days - but was treated very badly over her WI sitcom, Jam And Jerusalem. 'They kept on changing the slot - moving it from an hour to half-an-hour. She was bending over backwards to make it work, then it was: "Can we have the same again but cheaper? Do you have to have everyone in every episode?" The audience was still growing despite all this, and then it got cancelled. 'Writing for telly is mind-numbingly humiliating and undignified. You're never told anything. You feel like a naughty schoolboy. At the BBC things get made and broadcast, but no one tells you if it's liked or disliked. I don't have the patience any more to come in and out of the door of executive TV land. It's a blur of idiots. 'When we first made The Young Ones there was only one person who had to say yes or no. Now you have to go through about ten people, and because they're changing channels so quickly, the executives are all just whizzing around trying to make a name for themselves. They hate anything that anyone who was there before had going.

They have no interest in TV at all. They're all career people.' A while ago, I suspect, discussing his TV nightmares would have sent him flying off the handle, or spiralling into one of his 'gloomy' moods. But he doesn't really do gloom any more. And although he'd probably be furious with me for saying it, I suspect his wife's cancer has had its part to play, in making him keep things in proportion. Not remotely funny: Ade wishes there was something he could do to take the misery away from his wife's suffering And one mustn't ignore the importance of his daughters, either. After being sent to boarding school himself at the age of 11, he was determined their childhoods should be different to his, so he pretty much built his life around them when not touring. The last time we met, the girls were leaving home and Ade was missing them desperately. He said it was like 'a bereavement' and, yes, it made him sad.

So he and Jennifer, whom he met in the early 1980s when they were both working at the Comedy Store in London, began to spend less time in the family's 400-year-old home in Devon and more in London, until the 'miserable grind' of cancer intervened. 'Our family's always been very close,' says Ade. 'I don't think we needed cancer to know we all love each other. The children have always been there, but they did come round a lot more and were a great help. 'It's weird the thing that happens with sisters. Between the ages of eight and 14, they're giving each other the evils at breakfast, but by the time they get into their late teens they generally get on with each other. It's a lot nicer. 'I do still miss the girls. I miss the ordinary things: cups of tea and sticky buns after school - just sitting round the table, chewing the fat and bitching about their teachers. But it's a lot better now than it used to be. You find yourself useful in other ways. 'I suppose we all want to feel important - that's the thing.

When you have a little baby, of course you're the most important thing in the world to them. When you leave the room they cry and that's lovely. But when they grow up and are able to choose who they like, then you've got to fight for them a bit more. They leave home at 18, then return and find out you're not as bad as they thought you were.' Which takes us back to his daughter's wedding. 'It was a cracker. We had it at home in Devon with about 200 people. It was very happy. There's also this idea that there might be grandchildren, which we'd like some of. 'It was the best wedding I've ever been to. I drank a steamboat full of liquor and my speech descended into a blubbery mess. I made myself cry and I made everybody else cry, by telling the truth in a beautiful way.' Then he looks up from his lunch and says: 'I do hope you'll quote what I've said about cancer. When you have it, you actually feel quite well. It's the chemotherapy that knocks you out and that's just brutal. You're hooked up to drips and things for three or four hours once a week.

'It wasn't remotely funny - there isn't even any black humour in the situation. It's just grinding. It's horrible. And, the hardest thing was, there's nothing I could do to take that misery away from her.' Monte Carlo Or Bust, ITV1, Thursday, 9pm. Jennifer Saunders - Biography - IMDb Jennifer Saunders Jump to: Overview (4) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Trivia (15) | Personal Quotes (48) Overview (4) 5' 4" (1.63 m) Mini Bio (1) Jennifer Saunders was born July 6th 1958 in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, UK. She attended Central School of Speech and Drama where she met her comedy partner Dawn French .

Like many of the early 80s groundbreaking "alternative" comedians she began her career as comedienne/actress/writer with Dawn French at "The Comedy Store" in London, where she met fellow comedians Adrian Edmondson (later her husband), Rik Mayall , Nigel Planer , Alexei Sayle and Peter Richardson , who later opened his own club, "The Comic Strip", where these comedians quickly formed a regular format. The Comic Strip team were transferred to television screens with great success as they all starred alongside each other in The Comic Strip Presents... (1982). After The Comic Strip she starred in a few episodes of The Young Ones (1982), Girls on Top (1985) and Happy Families (1985). Afterwards she and Dawn French wrote a TV show of their own, French and Saunders (1987), which was an immense success due to the double acts genius writing, brilliant acting performances and hilarious spoofs of world famous blockbusters and bands. It was in one of the episodes of "French and Saunders" that the audience had the pleasure of watching a sketch about an uptight daughter and a crazy, neurotic mother that became a comedy classic sitcom.

When the BBC next asked Saunders to write something, she just couldn't come up with any ideas, so she decided to expand on that sketch, making it more outrageous and therefore funnier - Absolutely Fabulous (1992) was born. Perhaps by coincidence Saunders had created one of the most loved, funny, and creative TV Shows in BBC history. Three series were made, in 1995 the show was put on hold until Saunders began writing again and came back with a fourth series in 2001. She is always ready for charity as well, she has been doing "Comic Relief" with a lot of her comedy companions ever since 1986. Jennifer Saunders, one of the most loved TV faces in Britain, will hit the screens with her fifth series of Absolutely Fabulous in 2003. - IMDb Mini Biography By: LC Spouse (1) ( 11 May 1985 - present) (3 children) Trivia (15) Has three daughters, Ella Edmondson , Beattie Edmondson and Freya Edmondson , with Adrian Edmondson .

The name of her character, Edina Monsoon, on Absolutely Fabulous (1992) is a play on the name "Eddie Monsoon," which in turn is a play on her husband, Adrian Edmondson 's surname that he has used as a character name in comedy performances. Can do a very accurate impression of Irish actress Amanda Burton and used it in "Witless Silence", a French and Saunders (1987) spoof of Burton's TV series Silent Witness (1996). Was revealed that she and partner Dawn French declined Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) honors "for services to comedy drama" in 2001. [December 2003] Won a People's Choice Award for "Favorite Movie Villain" for playing the wicked Fairy Godmother in Shrek 2 (2004) (January 2005) The Eurythmics ' songs "Jennifer", (from the album "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This"), and "Adrian" (from the album "Be Yourself Tonight") are dedicated to her and her husband.

Presented Seth Lakeman with the Folk Singer Of The Year award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2007. Got a voice coach to help her sing for the Fairy Godmother's opening number in Shrek 2 (2004). Because she was in the midst of filming another season of Absolutely Fabulous (1992), her vocal performance in Shrek 2 (2004) was recorded in England. Performed all her own singing in Shrek 2 (2004). Is now in remission after secretly battling Breast Cancer since October 2009. [July 2010] Has two grandsons, Fred (b. 27 August 2012) and Albert (b. February 2014), via daughter Ella Edmondson . Despite playing her mother on Absolutely Fabulous (1992), Saunders is only 10 years older than Julia Sawalha . Originally auditioned for the voice-part of Ursula in The Little Mermaid (1989) by recording an audio tape, but she was turned down for the part.

However, Steven Spielberg heard the tape many years later and by his request, she was cast as the Fairy Godmother in Shrek 2 (2004). Personal Quotes (48) When I was a child, a lot of my time was spent in Scotland because my mother's Scottish, and we used to go up to Ayrshire and visit relations in a place called Dalry. We were watching the first series recently, and it has a charm, a kind of amateur charm. At that point we didn't involve ourselves technically at all - we just messed about and told our jokes - and it looks a bit like that. We had this party in New York, and there were a lot of gay men there dressed up as the characters. I showed up just looking like myself, but it was a real case of shame. They looked so fantastic. We could never quite live up to it. They have become part of us in that if we get dressed up as them, we don't actually have to have a script. You can just become them. You just become nervy. The reason they keep it so tight is that no one liked them, so that without each other, actually, they couldn't exist. They support each other.

They support their flaws and everything else. My daughters related to something in the Spice Girls that made them feel better about being female. They truly started to believe girls could do anything. They could be fat, thin, anything they wanted to be. Men would find it much harder because men have such odd personal relationships with each other. They don't really emotionally connect, whereas women do. I think women become very close. Like all girls, when I was growing up, I always worried about this bit of me being too fat or that bit. But I look back at pictures of me when I was young, and I was thin and gorgeous. I'm a total petrolhead. My three brothers and I used to ride scrambling bikes in the field near where we lived. We all liked cars. I've always loved the smell of an engine. I'm a really good driver. I've been driving since I was very small, and I do like driving fast. I remember the first time my dad taught me that when you go into a corner you change down then put your foot right down on the way out. I'm very competitive about driving. I write for women because it's the only way I can use what I've experienced.

It's good that people like what I write, but I don't want to go down the feminist path. I think when Madonna did sexy stuff, she looked more in control. And I think it looked more like she was breaking boundaries. Today, it feels like it's pandering to everything that's wrong, and I don't think it's nice, especially for young girls. I remember when the first police scary video thing came out, and you thought, wow, ooh, look at this, come and look, come and look. And now it's on every channel. I love the TV show, and if you make a bad movie it means you've soiled it. Just like if we made an advert. We were offered so many times and I'd say, look, this is the good thing, and you can't compromise that, because then you compromise the integrity of the characters. I grew up with a mother who, every time she saw something, would say, I'm going to look that up. And I've become that person - I've become the reference-book person. There were a lot of areas we didn't cover that I'm hoping to cover if we do some specials.

One is to see more of Patsy's home and her home life, which is just the saddest thing. When you are doing chemo, you have a load of time. Well, I would definitely give up performing... But I would still sit down in an office and pretend to write with Dawn, even if we never produced anything, because it's just hilarious. I would miss that. Well, I'm lucky because, you see, I'll probably bounce back from this role. The way certain men treat women is influenced by the Internet a lot. The truth is, you can be honest with your friends - but you just can't be honest with the general public if you want to keep your friends. 'The Rocky Horror Show' [ The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)] was actually my first musical love. Porsches are a great drive. Lacroix has been fantastic. He's very nice. He gets the joke, and I think that's a good thing. I've never had Botox. But I like people to imagine I have. I'm my own worst critic. I could tell the critics a thing or two about my shows.

I used to take someone with me for the chemotherapy so I could do jokes. You always try and find something absurd. I think people imagine that your fame somehow sort of equates with how much you get paid. I think it is a bit harder for women starting in comedy. I recommend a little dose of cancer to anyone. I can remember the first face-lift show that came on. I rang up everyone - are you watching? I'm watching. I came to the Kardashians a bit late, and I'm still just gob-smacked. Who are these people? At home, I relax by gardening, or just pottering. I'd much rather have sat there and just been a fly on the wall, instead of having to smile at people. I'd rather have been a waitress. Just gone round and stared at people. I think the idea of losing your hair is still very potent, emotional thing. I did want a boy child because I had this romantic idea that a boy child when he's 16 takes his mother out for dinner. Commissioners are obsessed with young people, which is funny because they don't watch telly - only old people do. But I think our humour is exactly the same today.

Only, we've made rules now. We've said we are not going to do prosthetic make-up scenes, because when they take it off half your face comes off. You get crushes on people. You have to see them every day in that week. They're a fantastic person, and it could be a man or a woman. No, sometimes we just have to take liberties because the idea was so good. I wish we'd just gone with the idea that Patsy had been a man. It would have been fantastic. I always swore I would never write a book. But I read Clare Balding 's and it was really interesting and so prettily written and lovely and not too revealing. I went to her book launch and met her editor who said 'why don't you think about it? You can do it however you want, based on your characters or you.' I'm a walkawayer. If someone brings me a really crap meal in a restaurant I will tell them it's wonderful and then just never go to the restaurant again. I think that's the best way to do it generally, rather than sit and fight and annoy your head. Just pretend to enjoy it and then leave.

My job gives me the attention I'd otherwise crave. Me just being myself in public or on TV is the biggest nightmare in the world. I cannot do confrontation. You know that fight or flight thing? I'm flight. I just don't want the argument. I haven't got time in my life to do all the things I should be doing, like running and dieting and decorating my house, buying some furniture. I did grieve a bit when I wasn't having the chemo anymore. I was used to sitting in the little chair and then the nurse would come and do it. It was like that was your job for that long and it was reassuring. I absolutely love Scotland. I'm always happy there. See also Ade Edmondson on TV, politics...but NOT wife Jennifer Saunders' breast cancer battle - Mirror Online News Ade Edmondson on TV, politics...but NOT wife Jennifer Saunders' breast cancer battle Back in 2009 Jennifer was diagnosed with breast cancer, a blow she chronicles in her autobiography Bonkers: My Life in Laughs Share Jennifer Saunders and Adrian Edmondson in the Royal Box at Wimbledon (Photo: Rex) Share Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing!

Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email He's well known as one half a celebrity couple. So ask Ade Edmondson how wife Jennifer Saunders is doing and he knows what's coming next. "She's very well..." he begins. There's a pause, then he asks: "You're going to ask about cancer, aren't you?" Back in 2009 Jennifer was diagnosed with breast cancer, a blow she chronicles in her autobiography Bonkers: My Life in Laughs, a bestseller last Christmas. But it's a topic Ade, 57, no longer likes to discuss. "We don't really talk about cancer," he says. "It's kind of a while ago now. Loads of people have cancer and they get through it and it's part of life. But it's almost like having a bloody cold these days. "Some people sadly don't get through and a lot of people do. But it's boring to treat people who have had cancer and survived as 'cancer survivors' for the rest of their lives. They're just people still." Jennifer has a similar view and she has criticised people who continue to identify themselves by their illness. "It's the job you don't have to work for," she said.

"You suddenly get so much attention and if you're not used to that I bet it can sway you a little bit. I'm used to it!" Bottom stage show Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson Royal Centre Nottingham So, concludes Ade, we should be talking about Jennifer Saunders, comedian, actress, writer and mother. "She's more related to everything else she's ever done than to cancer." And just in case I've not got the message, he adds: "And that's it on cancer." Jennifer, 55, and Ade have been together for 28 years after meeting through The Comic Strip comedy gang which included their long-term sidekicks Rik Mayall and Dawn French. But it wasn't love at first sight - for Jennifer at least - and they were just friends for five years. "I was in love with her from when she first appeared," Ade admits. "It just so happened I was married to someone else. By the time I got unmarried she was with someone else or I was with someone else... but who cares? We are where we are." With two comedians in the family, surely life must be fun. "We do make each other laugh a lot," he says. "Our house is a barrel of laughs.

It is, quite genuinely." Ade Edmondson (Photo: PA) He and Jennifer have three grown-up daughters, Ella, Beattie and Freya. Singers-ongwriter Ella and husband Dan have two sons: Fred, 18-months, and month-old Burt. Ade and Jennifer will be seeing much more of them soon because the young family are moving closer to their home in London. "I never wanted boy children but now I've got a couple of grandsons I'm rather pleased," he says. This gives him a chance to pass on his passions. For example, his next project is building a tree-house for the boys. "Me and my son-in-law are looking at a book of tree houses," he says. "I enjoy playing around in them and on dangerous zip wires - things like that." He also has a love of boats that he indulges to the full in his new six-part ITV series Ade at Sea, where the focus is on Britain's maritime history and people who still work on the sea. He's had his own boat for three decades. So will he be taking the boys out on the water when they're a bit older?

Ade Edmonson enjoying a pint By way of reply, he says: "We went on a walk recently, Jennifer and I, to the pub down by the river and I said, 'Wouldn't it be great to get the boat out now?' "And she said, 'Hmmm...probably not' and then said, 'Go with the boys.' " Lack of "facilities" may have a lot to do with this. Ade explains: "My youngest daughter quite liked sailing but no one else did because there's never any proper toilets. I often do my sailing single-handed." Ade first burst into the public consciousness in 1982 as Vyvyan Basterd, a psychopathic punk student in anarchic sitcom The Young Ones alongside his university mate Mayall. More violent slapstick with the same duo followed in Filthy, Rich and Catflap and (a much bigger hit) Bottom. After playing several non-comedy roles on TV and on stage, Ade began the 21st with the focus firmly on his folk band The Bad Shepherds. They are still going strong, now gearing up for a short tour of Australia next month then a summer of gigs and festivals.

He says: "I love the band. It's my favourite thing. We're a folk band but we get our inspiration from the punk era - the era of really good songwriting. "Everyone thinks punk is about shouting and swearing and spitting but if you listen to the lyrics they're just amazing - sublime, so adult in their themes, so socially relevant." But acting is still part of his life too. And in a forthcoming ITV drama called Prey he plays a very unfamilar role as a senior policeman. "I play the Assistant Chief Constable," he says. "I enjoyed that. It's nice wearing a uniform. It's a funny thing being a figure of authority." All the same, he doesn't have any time for the people who run the country. "Politics has become boring because they're all so much the same," he moans. "Everyone says this - but it's just true. "You have the same class of people but at the same time none of them care. "None of them seem to have a grip on the real world at all. They all seem to have been to Oxbridge and done politics, philosophy and economics. "They're just all so dull and keep treating us like children.

"That's why we're so disenchanted with politics - though people in their late teens at the minute seem to be slightly more politicised, which is rather encourcentury aging. I've got a feeling people are slightly more in touch and slightly more disappointed in what's going on and slightly more kind of ready to stand up and shout about it. So I think there is some righteous anger brewing." Would he ever think of entering politics? "Absolutely not," he says. "To be a politician these days you have to be completely clean. It's not that I have a lot of skeletons. It's just that I've lived. They'll find something I've said in the paper at some point. You can't say anything these days." New series Ade At Sea follows his successful Ade In Britain series, which was a culinary road trip. This love of food helped him win Celebrity MasterChef last year too. With so many strings to his bow - actor, musician, presenter, chef, seafarer - I start to say he strikes me as someone who is... "Bored," he interjects with a laugh.

Actually, I meant someone useful after a shipwreck, but it was this self-confessed low boredom threshold which saw him kill off a planned spin-off series from Bottom with Rik Mayall last year. "I like doing stuff," he explains. "I like seeing stuff. Working with one man and just doing one thing all the time is a bit too limiting. I loved Bottom and I'm very proud of it but I didn't just want to do that for my life." Ade's also been vocal about comedy he doesn't approve of. In 2009 he said alternative comedy was born in the 80s TIME during treatment because TV jokers at the time were "mainly men in dickie bows telling racist and homophobic gags. They were all like Jim Davidson. It was kind of dull". This sparked an angry tirade from Davidson, who hit back that Ade was a "self-satisfied lefty" and "the unfunniest man in the world". "To be honest I'd thought at the time he was dead," says Ade. "Otherwise I wouldn't have said it because those slanging matches are no fun." So how did he feel about Jim winning this year's Celebrity Big Brother? "Did he?" asks Ade.

"I didn't know he had. I wasn't watching." And he adds with a laugh: "Well... well done, Jim." Ade At Sea starts on ITV next Thursday (March 20) at 8.30pm. Like us on Facebook Most Read Most Recent Most Read Most Recent Jennifer Saunders: My unauthorised biography is no laughing matter - Telegraph Celebrity news Jennifer Saunders: My unauthorised biography is no laughing matter Jennifer Saunders, the comedienne, condemns an unauthorised biography of her that is due to be published later this year. Saunders says she will not be following suit. 'I couldn’t, because I can’t remember very much, and I don’t keep a diary.' Photo: Getty Images By Richard Eden 7:22AM BST 29 Apr 2012 Jennifer Saunders is not amused by a biography that is being written about her. “On principle, I think it’s a bit cheap,” the comedienne says of the book by Jacky Hyams, a reputable author, who has published books including The Real Life Downton Abbey and Bombsites and Lollipops.

Saunders, who is in remission after treatment for breast cancer, is understood to have asked her friends and family not to co-operate with the book. “I mean, who’s she talking to?” questions Saunders, who is married to the actor Adrian Edmondson. “Certainly, not me. It will just be a load of newspaper and magazine articles cobbled together.” Dawn French, her comedy partner, was so upset by an unauthorised biography written about her, by Alison Bowyer, that she decided to pen her own memoirs, Dear Fatty. Saunders says she will not be following suit. “I couldn’t, because I can’t remember very much, and I don’t keep a diary.” Related Articles Jennifer Saunders - Zimbio Jennifer Saunders By Deena Bustillo on Jennifer Saunders, the British comedienne best known for creating and starring inthe show Ab Fab, revealed to the world today that she's been fighting breast cancer for the last 8 months. Apparently doctors discovered a lump in her breast in October, according to BBC News. Word has it she's in remission now, after undergoing a course of treatment over the last few months.

The 52-year-old was recently spotted at Wimbledon and looked happy and healthy in a wig and bandanna (hair loss is a... Read Full Story Overview Jennifer Saunders (born 8 July 1958) is a British comedienne and actress. She is best known for creating and starring in the show "Absolutely Fabulous." She is married to Adrian Edmondson. See more about Jennifer Saunders here. Featured Stories Jennifer Saunders' account of battling breast cancer is as honest as it is uplifting | Daily Mail Online comments Recovered: Jennifer Saunders, pictured in full health, says that chemotherapy took a crippling toll on her Seated alongside hordes of braying children in the audience at a pantomime, Jennifer Saunders cut a dejected and weirdly out-of-place figure amid the wall-to-wall hilarity. Shorn of her trademark sleek blonde hair — the result of gruelling cancer treatment — the lower half of her face was covered by a white, Michael Jackson-style surgical mask, on doctors’ orders to protect her weakened immune system. That she was there at all, however, to support her long-time husband Adrian Edmondson — who was appearing on stage in Peter Pan in Canterbury — was testament to her no-nonsense approach to the disease.

But in spite of her stoical refusal to be cowed by the punishing effects of six months of intravenous chemotherapy and the powerful breast cancer drug Herceptin, the medication had taken a crippling toll on the much-loved comedienne. ‘There are times when you want to cry all day,’ writes the French and Saunders star in her soon-to-be published autobiography, Bonkers: My Life in Laughs. ‘My lowest point came when I lost all my hair; every eyelash, every follicle . . . I felt chemical. I felt like a chemical. ‘Then I got a terrible rash all over my face. They think it was a reaction to the Herceptin. It was horrible. I felt like a great big overgrown baby with pimples all over my face. A big, horrible, red-faced baby.’ Her occasional method of coping with her debilitating treatment — drinking vodka with a female friend — would, no doubt, have found favour with her high-living alter ego, Edina, in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. ‘You can drink when you’re doing chemo,’ insists Jennifer.

‘You’ve got so much s*** in your body you may as well be drunk.’ Suffering: Jennifer Saunders took this candid shot of herself during treatment for breast cancer Of course, this admittedly unorthodox approach is hardly likely to find favour with her doctors, but it does rather chime with 55-year-old Saunders’ slightly off-the-wall attitude to her treatment. ‘The weird thing is that I came to quite enjoy my visits to the clinic,’ she writes. ‘If you’re me, having treatment is a fairly good thing: your life has a routine and pattern. You do what you’re told and I find that quite liberating.’ RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share It involved her having a ‘portacath’ tube inserted in her arm into which the ‘huge horse syringe’ of red-coloured drugs would be injected. What followed was like the mother of all hangovers. ‘It’s like a night on mixed spirits, wine and grappa. It’s a real cracker. It’s a humdinger,’ she says.

She describes how she sat in a large white chair in her own cubicle at the Central London hospital and was also given a ‘cold cap’; a helmet-like device that freezes the scalp and is supposed to help prevent hair loss caused by the side effects of the strong chemo drugs. Diagnosis: Jennifer's cancer diagnosis came as she planned to take a year off following a tour with her comedy partner Dawn French Jennifer goes on: ‘I had the same wonderful nurse every time. Joel was funny and a sharpshooter with the needle; bullseye every time. Friends would drop by with the papers and I had a rota of company keepers. ‘When the six months was up, I was relieved. But strangely I knew I would miss the routine. 'I would miss my hours in the white chair. I would miss laughing with Joel. I would even miss my portacath.’ Her diagnosis, in October 2009, came just as she planned a year off following the end of a farewell tour of Britain and Australia with her comedy partner Dawn French. She booked a routine mammogram after a holiday in Spain with a friend who’d just gone through her own breast cancer treatment.

But doctors at London’s Royal Marsden hospital found the mother-of-three had two lumps in her left breast and she was immediately admitted for a lumpectomy. Hard working: Instead of recuperating, Jennifer signed up to write the script for the Spice Girls' musical Viva Forever, one of the few flops of her career Because she had been diagnosed with the fast-growing HER2 positive type of the disease, she was also put on a six-month course of chemotherapy and Herceptin, followed by a course of radiation. But the cold cap treatment failed to stop her hair falling out and eventually, Freya, the youngest of her three daughters with Edmondson, shaved off what was left. Undaunted, Jennifer ordered a custom-made wig woven from human hair. Her fitting, she recalls, was a surreal experience that involved having layers of cling film wrapped tightly around her head on to which her hairline was drawn before being removed and used as template. Much-loved: In a 30-year career Miss Saunders has won three Baftas and an International Emmy in 1994 for Absolutely Fabulous Instead of taking time off to recuperate, she ploughed straight back into work.

She accepted an offer from Judy Cramer, the producer behind the hit Abba musical and film Mamma Mia! to pen the script for the Spice Girls musical Viva Forever!. She wrote between bouts of treatment on days when she could barely get out of bed because of the side-effects of the drugs. However, her efforts were in vain. The West End show was given a mauling by the critics, suffered low ticket sales and closed in June this year after a seven-month run with rumoured losses of £5 million. It was one of very few flops in a 30-year career that has seen Miss Saunders win three Baftas and an International Emmy in 1994 for Absolutely Fabulous, the series she wrote and appeared in as Bollinger-swilling PR Edina Monsoon, alongside co-star Joanna Lumley. The once highly successful French and Saunders, which ran for 20 years on the BBC until 2007, eventually fell victim to budget cuts at the corporation — a state of affairs which clearly still rankles. Even now, she is prone to rant about ‘flaky’ TV executives who don’t stay long enough in their posts to make a difference.

She candidly admits she takes an antidepressant — the result of being prescribed another cancer drug, Tamoxifen, which caused the early onset of the menopause which she says was ‘fairly brutal’ and led to hot flushes, weight gain, a sense of mourning for her youth, and a feeling of pointlessness. ‘I just thought I was cross and that the whole world was wrong,’ she says. ‘Everyone was being stupid.’ She realised something was amiss when she and Edmondson took what was supposed to be a romantic holiday to Italy in the wake of her treatment. Iconic: One of the commedienne's most famous roles was Edina in Absolutely Fabulous alongside Joanna Lumley The couple flew to Milan and hired a tiny Fiat 500 to drive to their first stop, a hotel on the banks of the beautiful Lake Maggiore. But as they passed row upon row of smart-looking hotels, she became increasingly annoyed that her husband had not booked them into any of them. By the time they finally arrived in the room he had reserved for them on the internet, she had already made the decision it would not be good enough. ‘Ade had booked a lovely room with a balcony overlooking the lake.

But it was not lovely enough for Evil Jennifer,’ she writes. ‘Why couldn’t I love it? What was wrong with me?’ On the next stop in Lake Como, she refused to stay in the hotel he had chosen for them and booked instead into the eye-wateringly expensive Villa d’Este, where rooms with a view cost £800-a-night. Even so, she was not satisfied. She says she still had a ‘strange hollow feeling, even as I lay there necking numerous £20 gin and tonics’. Support: Jennifer has been married to comedian Ade Edmondson since 1985 Such emotional turmoil clearly came as something of a shock to Jennifer, who had been raised to present an English stiff upper lip to the outside world. Born in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the only girl in a family of three brothers, she spent her early years abroad in Cyprus and Turkey where her father, Tom, an RAF Group Captain (who was a awarded a CBE in 1969) was stationed. Eventually, the family settled in posh Acton Bridge, Cheshire. It was an idyllic, thoroughly middle-class upbringing of ponies and annual visits to the Horse of the Year Show.

Memoirs: Jennifer Saunders' book Bonkers: My Life In Laughs goes on sale on October 10 But after Jennifer left home to study to be a drama teacher in London, tragedy struck. Her brother Peter, who was three years her junior, died when he was 18. Clearly his loss remains raw even today. Indeed, Jennifer does not mention his death in her book, save for a short reference in the acknowledgements section at the end. But in a magazine interview to promote it at the weekend, she revealed Peter died in a motorbike accident. Jennifer married Ade Edmondson in 1985, and they have three grown-up daughters, Ella, Beattie and Freya, plus grandson Freddie. Their homes are a house in London and an imposing 400-year-old farmhouse with swimming pool, set in five acres on the edge of Dartmoor, which the couple bought 12 years ago. Jennifer soon became a regular fixture among the country set, riding out with Freya and members of the Mid Devon Hunt in the nearby village of Chagford on the traditional Boxing Day drag hunt.

Despite being given the all-clear from cancer three years ago, it is a subject that obviously still looms large in Jennifer’s life. This week, she courted controversy by appearing to criticise fellow survivors of the disease. Asked if she thought some people keep wearing cancer like a badge, she replied: ‘For ever, and I’ll give you why — because it is the job you don’t have to work for. ‘You get so much attention and, if you’re not used to that, I bet it can sway you a little. I’m used to it. My job gives me the attention I’d otherwise crave. They must be so p****d off when their hair grows back. And you think, “Oh, come on, cancer is so common now”.’ But given how bravely she has faced up to her frightening brush with the disease, surely Jennifer’s legions of adoring fans will be prepared to forgive her trademark forthrightness. n Bonkers: My Life In Laughs by Jennifer Saunders is published by Viking on October 10, priced at £20.

Question: Who is Jennifer Saunders married to
Answer: Adrian Edmondson